Tele-management of light sources both for indoor and outdoor applications are increasingly popular. Intelligent lighting has become widespread, and RF communication is a powerful technology to be used in this tele-management of lamps, in particular for domestic and office environments. Instead of controlling the power supply to the lamp, the trend has moved towards directly controlling the light source or lighting device (for example an exchangeable element of the lamp) by sending an RF control signal to the lighting device.
One example of such light source comprising a communication circuit can be found in the published patent application US 2012/0274208A1 which relates to a lighting device such as a replacement lighting device, comprising a light source (e.g. LED) for producing light. The lighting device further comprises a heat sink made of a material with an electrical resistivity being less than 0.01 Ωm (e.g. a metallic heat sink) which is part of the housing and transports heat away from the light source. A radio frequency communication circuit connected to an antenna serves to enable RF signal communication (e.g. to control the device via a remote control). The antenna is arranged at least 2 mm outside the heat sink.
A problem of this lighting device is that the communication efficiency of the arrangement in the known light source is not optimal.